Tales of Sin and Madness (15 page)

The man’s good at keeping secrets. Everyone says so. That’s why he’s here. The big policeman who had yelled and hit him thought so. Said he’d make a good spy – doesn’t give nothing up, he had said. Wanted to know about Julie and Sam and little Debbie. But that was the man’s business. Not the policeman’s.

He didn’t tell his secret to the old doctor, either. The old doctor with all his wrinkles and white clothes. The doctor didn’t hit him, but the man still didn’t tell the old doctor about Julie and Sam and little Debbie. The man knows about Julie and Sam and little Debbie. Of course he knows about them, but it’s his secret, and that’s that.

The man hears the voice of the bad man.

It makes the man excited – although he doesn’t express that excitement outwardly. He continues to sit in the corner and hum, although he does move his head slightly to the right, and looks at the hole in the wall.

It’s through this hole that he hears the bad man. His voice is faint and tinny, like he’s hearing the bad man’s voice through a radio box. The man gazes at the crisscross of the metal plate that covers the hole, and hums. Softly, gently, lyrically. Hums and hums. He hums to the hole, pretends it’s Julie and that the crisscross is her smiling face. Pretends that she likes his humming and that she is smiling and asking for more. Yes, that’s what the man likes to imagine when he hums into the hole – his wife sitting there loving his voice and his humming, not telling him to stop it, stop that infernal humming or else she’s going to leave him. Thinking those bad thoughts makes him angry and loses his stillness. That’s why he tries not to think those bad thoughts and instead pictures Julie smiling and loving his humming.

“Stop it! Stop that fucking humming!”

It’s the bad man.

“Stop it. Get out of my head!”

Five years. Five years the man has been humming into the hole. Five years the bad man has been telling him to stop it.

The man smiles. Continues to hum.

It’s his biggest and best secret. No one knows. Not even the bad man knows. No one knows except him. And maybe the black man. The man’s not too sure, but he thinks the black man might know about it. But that doesn’t matter, because the black man likes his humming.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you! Stop it. Stop it!”

The distant voice sounds even angrier than yesterday. And he was furious yesterday. So furious that he had to be gagged and put in restraints. The man had heard it all through the hole in the wall. It had made him smile, almost laugh. But he can’t laugh, because that would break his humming.

The man doesn’t know why, but it seems only the bad man in the bad ward can hear his humming through the hole in the wall.

“I’m just going to ignore you. Hmmm…hmmm…see I can hum too. Hmmm…shut the fuck up!”

Every day for five years. Every day the bad man shouts at him to stop it. Of course, the man never does. After all, he’s a bad man and bad men deserve what they get. The black man with the funny hairy thing isn’t a bad man. The black man likes his humming. The black man hates cleaning the bad ward. And the bad ward is full of other bad men. However, the man is convinced that the one who yells at him to stop is the worst.

The funny thing is, the bad man doesn’t even know who it is that’s humming. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from. Some days he thinks the humming is in his head.

The man’s heard the change in the bad man over the five years. Heard the bad man become angrier and more confused. Without even seeing the bad man, he’s noticed the change. More and more the bad man is put in restraints. More and more the bad man yells and bangs things around. Yet no one knows. The men in the white clothes don’t know what it is that’s causing the bad man to act so angry. They don’t hear the man’s humming through the hole in the wall. They know he hums, but they don’t know he hums to the bad man. Don’t know that every day, every hour, every moment he’s filling the bad man’s head with his lyrical madness.

It’s a secret. Between the bad man and himself, (and maybe the black man – but he won’t tell).

The man hears the bad man crying. Soft sobs that drift up through the hole in the wall.

“Why won’t you stop? Please just stop.”

But the man keeps on humming.

The bad man keeps on crying.

It makes the man happy, content. Almost as happy as when he slit the throats of Julie and Sam and little Debbie.

Now all is quiet. The man can’t hear the bad man’s crying.

Still the man hums, but he listens. Listens hard to what lies beyond the hole in the wall and Julie’s smiling face.

A period elapses, a period of about five minutes before the man hears noises coming from behind the hole in the wall. Noises that are distant, yet distinct.

Humming, the man listens. And hears screaming. Lots of it. But he also hears the bad man – who is also screaming, but they’re inaudible cries – the only word the man recognises is “stop”.

The man wonders just what’s going on. He’s never heard anything like it before, not in the five years he’s been humming to the bad man.

The commotion lasts a good twenty minutes. Faint screaming, chairs and beds crashing, voices lost and found, then lost again. It all rolls around in the man’s head and for a moment he loses his timing and stops humming.

Visions of Julie’s body, torn and bloody fill his head. Pictures of Sam writhing around on the floor, clutching at his spurting throat. Images of little Debbie cowering in her bed, the covers pulled tight around her face, her scared, wet eyes peering over the top of the sheets. They all meld into one glorious specter of blood and flesh.

When the vision fades, the man hears that the commotion far away has stopped. No more screams or furniture crashing.

The man feels his stillness beginning to wane. Realising he has stopped humming, the man starts up and immediately he feels good again

 All is quiet now, except for somebody sobbing. The man knows instantly it’s the bad man crying. Only this time it’s a different crying – happy, resolved; not the angry sobbing the man is used to.

Perhaps the bad man has been subdued again.

However, when the man hears the cries, cries he’s certain are the white men, from behind the hole in the wall, cries like, “Oh my God!” and “What in the hell happened!” the man knows something bad has happened. The bad man has done something terrible.

But then, the man already knew that.

It’s what he has been expecting to happen. He wasn’t sure when it would happen, but knew it would happen. It’s what he’s been hoping for, praying for, planning for.

And the best thing is – nobody knows. It’s just his little secret.

His and the bad man.

The man continues to hum, not looking at anything in particular.

After…

Standing just inside Ward D’s recreation hall, Stelig scanned the room, then shook his head. “We’re wasting our time. Warren’s nuts. He’s a liar.”

“He may be a cold-blooded killer, but he’s no liar. Hell, he ‘fessed up to his crimes the second the cops caught him.”

“Yeah, but blaming someone else for what he did today…Christ, what a nut job.”

Adams shrugged. “I just don’t see why he would lie about a thing like that.”

“Because he’s bonkers, that’s why.”

When Stelig had gone to the infirmary to question Warren, he found the man strangely calm. He was tied down to the bed, bandages over his ears, and answered all of Steligs’s questions about what happened. Stelig had to write each question down on a piece of paper, but Warren, still able to talk, had told him the same thing over and over again – that he wasn’t to blame. It was somebody else in the building. They had done it. They had killed all the people. They were responsible for his ears.

So, along with Adams, Stelig had searched the entire hospital – every floor, every ward, every room. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find – one of the inmates cowering in one of the bedrooms, clothes covered in blood, gory knife clutched in his hand, perhaps. That would’ve been something. An answer.

So far, with Warren not claiming responsibility, he had turned up squat.

This was the last ward, the last floor. The top floor. If he found nothing here, then he would have to go back to see Warren.

Stelig spotted the cleaner, Sam Goodfrey, and called him over. The elderly black man placed his mop against the wall and shuffled over. “Yessir?”

“Sam, you see anything unusual here today?”

“Like what, Sir?”

“Any of the patients acting weird, any of them missing for awhile?”

The cleaner looked down at the floor, licked his lips, then looked back up. His eyes reminded Stelig of a puppy’s – only this puppy had bags the size of large suitcases under them. “No Sir. No strange business. Why?”

“Well, I suppose you might as well hear about it. You’re gonna hear about it eventually. There was some nasty business in Ward C.” Stelig paused before saying, “All the inmates were killed. As were three nurses.”

The old man gasped. He put one wrinkled hand over his mouth. “Good lord. That’s horrible. How did it happen?”

“Warren Spencer.”

“He killed them all?”

Stelig nodded.

“Well we’re not entirely sure yet,” Adams said. “Warren claims it was somebody else. Another inmate. We’re looking around the hospital, trying to find information on who else could have done it.”

“I’m positive it was Warren,” Stelig said. “Still, be on the look-out for any of the inmates acting…out of the ordinary.”

“I will. Yessir, I surely will.”

“Okay. Thank you. And I don’t need to tell you that this goes no further than this building. Nobody needs to know unless absolutely necessary. Understand?”

The old man nodded. “Of course, Sir.”

 “Good. Continue with your work.”

The cleaner nodded, turned then walked slowly back to his mop and bucket.

“Was it just me, or did that old fart look happy with the news?”

“Maybe, I dunno,” Stelig said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.

“You think he knows more than he’s letting on?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous. He’s an old man. He’s a cleaner. What could he possibly know?”

Adams shrugged his round shoulders.  

“I’m telling ya, this is a waste of time. These patients up here, they’re about as harmless as…” Stelig thought of the first thing that came to mind, “as a bunch of puppy dogs.”

“Might I remind you, Sir, that they are criminals.”

“Most of these patients are just crazy. Harmless, but crazy.” Stelig looked down at the stubby Doctor. “Might I remind you that this is the good ward, the quiet ward? The patients here haven’t displayed any signs of violent behavior since committing their crimes. Hell, they’re not the least bit violent. Not now.”

“How about Harris over there?” Adams pointed to the man sitting in the far corner of the room. “He butchered his entire family.”

Stelig huffed. “That was five years ago. He hasn’t displayed any signs of violent or aggressive behavior since. He went willingly with the cops, never even put up a fight. Hell, Harris is more harmless than anyone here. All he does is sit in that corner humming to himself.” Stelig stopped and looked over at Harris. Watched the man stare into space, grinning stupidly to himself. He listened to his humming.

“Christ, think I’d go crazy listening to that all day,” Adams said. “He sings the same three notes all day. Nothin’ else. Can you believe it?” Adams chuckled. “Enough to make anyone crazy. Don’t know how the doctors and nurses up here can stand it.”

Stelig sighed. He had always felt sorry for Harris. Wasn’t sure why, but there was something pathetic about him. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Still, it proves my point. They’re all harmless in here. Nuts, but harmless. We’re wasting our time. Warren did it, and he knows it. Doesn’t want to take the blame, that’s all.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t see why he’d lie, that’s all.”

Harris looked at Stelig then. Turned his head and gazed into the Doctor’s eyes. Unease shot through Stelig’s body. The man still hummed the same three notes, but now he was wearing a lopsided grin. It would’ve been almost comical were it not for the intelligence in his eyes.

It unnerved Stelig, although he would never admit it.

Stelig turned around and tried to shake his discomfort. “You’re too trusting, Adams. That’s your problem. Come on, let’s go. There’s nothing here.”

As the two men walked down the corridor, Stelig began humming.

“Catchy tune,” Adams said with a smile.

“Huh?”

“You were humming the same three notes as our resident singer.”

“Was I?”

Adams nodded.

Stelig’s unease grew. He smiled, but when he spoke his tone was serious. “Well I just hope I can get the damn tune out of my head.”

NOTES:

I wrote this story for the anthology
Asylum Volume 3: The Quiet Ward
. For those of you who don’t know, the
Asylum
anthologies were a wonderful group of books that dealt with, funnily enough, stories set in and about asylums. Each book was about a different ward, or a different type of mania – there was the violent ward, the psycho ward, and the third and last book, the one this story appeared in, was the quiet ward.